A Day of Aerobatic Training

I recently took YC, my MiniNimbus, up to WIlliams to get a bit of work done on the glider and the trailer.  I hate to drive all that way just to drop off the glider and come back home.  So, as I’ve done several times before, I decided to stay and take a couple of aerobatic flights with one of their aerobatic instructors.

MDM Fox.

In the past I’d flown their ASK-21, which is good for most aerobatic maneuvers, except for spins, which are prohibited.  I’ve wanted to fly their MDM Fox, which is a purpose-built aerobatic glider, but it had not been available during the previous visits.  So I was very excited to learn that the Fox was available for my flights on this visit.

Nope.  Not a glass panel.  It's a holder for the card reminding
the pilot of the planned maneuvers!

My instructor on this day was Ben Mayes, son of Rex and Noelle Mayes, the founders and owners of WIlliams Soaring, Inc.  Ben is a dynamic young guy, and I found him to be a very good instructor.

I took two flights with him.  On the first, we worked first on spins, then we did a set of loops, then several rolls, a couple of  chandelles, and then a few more rolls. Then it was time to go land the aircraft. 

Here is a link to a GoPro video of the flight. There is a fair part of the beginning that is us on tow, releasing, and making some clearing turns.  The actual aerobatic work starts somewhere around 2.5 to 3 minutes into the video.

 Aerobatic flight #1

I’ve had spin training before, in an L-23 at Air Sailing, and I’ve worked on loops and chandelles during prior visits.  So I was getting the hang of those pretty well (although my loops need a lot of work if they are ever to be round).  The rolls, well, not so good. I keep dropping the nose about halfway through the roll.  Guess I’ll have to go back and have Ben teach me some more.

In the second flight Ben introduced me to the “Humpty Bump.” This cool maneuver starts with a dive to pick up sufficient speed, then a leveling off to a bit of horizontal flight; once the horizontal line is established you pull into a vertical up line. Just before the energy is expended, you pull back on the stick and go inverted “over the top” and then take a vertical down line, and then pull out to the horizontal.  Essentially, it is similar to the loop, except where the loop resembles an “O” the humpty-bump resembles an upside down “U”.  I found establishing the line vertically downward in the humpty-bump to be the most thrilling of the maneuvers I’ve worked on to date.

Here is a link to a video of the second flight.   Second Aerobatic Flight  

Great fun!  I highly recommend this!

-Van Henson

Tom and Ramy’s Excellent Adventure

XC Mentoring Flight, April 2017

This report documents a XC mentoring flight that I did with Ramy on April 20th of 2017.  Let me start by saying that this was highly instructive but also a fun thing to do.  It was a beautiful blue-sky day with nice cumulus.  Bases were in the 5K to 6K range, light surface winds and about 10 to 15 kts northerly winds aloft.  Our pal John Scott was towing, it was a weekday and local traffic was light.  Walter was flying his glider and flew along with us for part of the flight.  Ramy and I shared the flying duties with Ramy doing the heavy lifting when we really needed a climb to continue the flight.  We used the same conservative glide ratios and reserve altitudes that I would if I was flying solo.

We headed south, towing a little past I-580 and released in lift at 4K.   Going was pretty easy, hopping from cloud to cloud heading first toward Mt Osa.  As we got further from Byron, our working altitude range shrank in order to maintain a conservative glide to safe landouts.  Eventually we got almost to the northern end of the San Antonio Valley.  About a year ago Van and I drove up to the SAV landing strip in order to retrieve Ramy and his glider.  It was great to see the same landing strip from the air and to understand how it’s situated and take note of surrounding landmarks.

Beyond this point there was too much blue before the next set of clouds, so we decided to head northwest into the Livermore Valley.  By this point in the day, things were drying out and clouds were becoming scarce.  It was instructive to see how Ramy would read the conditions to find the next climb (more about this later).  We worked our way down Mines Road, coming out into the flatlands near my old workplace, Lawrence Livermore Lab. 

We flew over the Lab and I snapped a few photos of the National Ignition Facility (NIF).  The NIF is the world’s highest energy laser and is used for laser inertial fusion research.  I really wanted to get this photo because, about 2 years ago, a glider pilot in France photographed the ITER Facility in Cadarache.  ITER is another large fusion research facility, but won’t be operational for a number of years.  So I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to match ITER in glider-based photography (photos at the bottom). 

After overflying the Lab, we headed toward the Livermore Airport.  Once roughly over the airport, we again encountered too much blue to continue west, so headed northeast toward Morgan Territory, with the hope of eventually reaching a line of clouds up toward Mount Diablo.  But, by the time we reached Morgan Territory, we were starting to get low, so we explored the area north of the Byron Airport.  Although we found some nice pockets of lift around the Byron Highway, we weren’t able to get further East than Discovery Bay.  We were reaching our lower limit for glide to Byron, so we decided to end the flight and landed a few minutes later.  Flight duration was about 3 hours and distance was about 140 km.  Not surprisingly, average speed was low because we needed to stop often to thermal in order to stay within our working altitude range.

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html;jsessionid=305458D6F2FC7125FC88D2C008A7F011?flightId=-1900263093

In doing this flight, I learned a huge amount from Ramy, more than I can or should try to write here.  But I thought that I’d try to summarize some of the major takeaways:

•  Scan the sky and read the conditions – constantly:  Of course we are all taught this at various points in our soaring career, but seeing a Top Tier pilot put it into practice is a very different learning experience.  Throughout the flight, Ramy was constantly scanning the conditions: which clouds look best, under what portion of the cloud are we likely to find lift, is the next cloud isolated or part of a group or line of clouds, what is the direction of the wind aloft, look for traffic, if we can’t make it to that cloud are there other options in the same vicinity that we can detour to, etc, etc, etc.  Early in the flight, when the going was easy, this was interesting.  Later in the flight when the clouds started to go away, this hyper-situational awareness was essential. 

• Don’t commit to a steep turn too quickly:  When Ramy was flying and we encountered lift, I noted how he would fly relatively shallow turns to explore the thermal before committing to turning steeply.  Sometimes, when a cloud looked productive, but we encountered sink rather than lift, we would take the time to explore a bit and often found lift, just under a different part of the cloud.

• Have a Plan B, C, … and be ready to use it if things aren’t working:  If we started heading off toward a cloud or wisp and either discovered it was too far away or it started to deteriorate as we approached, Ramy would have an alternate plan for where to detour.  I don’t recall ever striking out in a direction and then having to retreat back to the last thermal because things didn’t work out.  There was always one or more detours in the same general direction that he had scoped out in advance.

• If you accept Livermore, Tracy and Meadowlark as possible landouts, you have a very large area to fly in: It was interesting to see how much terrain we could cover using only these three landouts as safe havens.  If you include the SAV strip, the area expands even more.  Of course the flip side is that some of these locales are darn inconvenient and you really don’t want to retrieve a Grob 103 from the SAV.  Also, Livermore has a tower, so there is that to contend with.  But I found this observation to be sort of mind expanding for what is possible from Byron.  

•  Sometimes what looks scary is not:  I think that this is a very important point for new XC pilots.  At one point, we were scratching around over pretty inhospitable terrain, no suitable landing areas in sight and we didn’t seem all that high.  Ramy is flying at this point, but I realize that I would feel pretty uncomfortable if I was flying alone.  But stepping back, I see that we have two paved landing strips in conservative glide.  Furthermore, we are in the same valley as Mines Road, so we have a nice straight shot to the flatlands with no terrain obstructions.  So while the visual is intimidating, the reality is that we are actually in very good shape from a flight safety perspective.  My takeaway is that it’s important to find the right balance in this situation.  If you respond too much to the “looks-scary” part of your brain, then you probably won’t progress much as a XC pilot and worse, it can interfere with making good quality decisions.  Of course you don’t want to totally ignore the flashing red light in the back of your head, because that can end badly.  Each pilot will have their own balance point depending on skills, experience and temperament.  Also, the balance point should change depending on familiarity with the location, conditions of the day and so on.  But the bottom line is that you need to learn to trust your training and make good decisions to progress. 

As I said before, this flight was not only instructive but enjoyable.  Ramy has a great mentoring style, informal and willing to explain what he is doing and how he is making decisions.  Sharing the flying, with Ramy handling the more difficult stretches, allowed me to step back and observe how he handled various situations and compare to how I would handle them.  I flew over new terrain that I’ve heard about from more experienced pilots and had a chance to gauge degree of difficulty in flying further from Byron.   Ramy and I both enjoy hiking so we pointed out some of our favored spots as we flew over the hills. 

In short, great experience.  If you get a chance to fly with Ramy, or another of our Top Tier pilots, don’t pass it up.

Lots to learn, it’s definitely a life-long endeavor.

Tom

A Hard Landing in Truckee

Last Sunday (July 31) I had a very hard landing while flying the NCSA Grob 103 (N3981C) at KTRK. Several members of the club have asked me what happened, and since I think my experience can help others avoid a similar situation, here is a description of what happened.

First, let's be clear:  cause of the event was pilot error.  I'd love to say otherwise, but I cannot.  I blew it.

The short version is that, despite being aware of the hazards and the weather conditions, and actively thinking about them throughout setting up the landing and the downwind leg, somewhere between turning base and landing I managed to let the airspeed bleed off so that my final approach was made without sufficient airspeed margin. The more detailed description is as follows:

The landing took place on runway 20 at approximately 2:20 pm, at the end of a flight of approximately 38 minutes duration. I was flying from the back seat; I had a passenger on her first flight in a small aircraft in the front seat.

The general conditions of the day were that the valley was filled with smoke from nearby fires, there was a southwesterly wind varying from 10 to 20 knots on the ground, and the air was somewhat turbulent aloft. The smoke affected the visibility, so that nearby mountains were visible in outline, but not detail, and from 10,000 feet directly over the airport the town of Truckee was easily located but hard to make out in detail; locally, however, (within several miles) visibility was fine and was no factor.

My passenger became somewhat nauseous as we climbed through 10,000 feet in bumpy thermals, and asked me to fly straight instead of turning; I accommodated her wish, flying a long back-and-forth pattern through the house thermal over the frog pond, losing a bit of altitude on each pass until I was down to 8300 feet or so, and informed her we would have to thermal or land. She asked me to land, so I headed back to the initial point.

The area around the North Star parking lot was solid lift, and I had to use full spoilers to drop to pattern altitude for entry on the 45. I closed the spoilers before I entered the pattern; realizing I wanted to preserve my altitude. While maneuvering toward the pattern entry I tuned in AWOS. Wind conditions were reported as “240 at 10 knots, gusting 21 knots”.  The wind was at 40 degrees to the runway heading, and I realized this meant the crosswind and parallel components would be similar in strength and would likely be somewhat less than 10 knots.  In a gust, though, the crosswind component could be noticeably higher, even as much as 16 kts or so.

I consciously applied the adage of adding “1/2 the wind speed” to the book approach speed of 55 knots.  I split the difference between wind and wind+gust and decided to add 7 knots to the approach speed, making my approach speed 62 knots. I also reminded myself to make a high approach and turn downwind-to-base “inside the spillway” (Martis Lake Reservoir has a spillway northeast of the approach end of runway 20; the plan was to make the turn between the end of the runway and the spillway.)

There was no traffic in the pattern; a tow plane and glider departed from runway 20 as I entered the downwind leg and was no factor, and a general aviation aircraft was at the threshold of runway 29; they radioed to me that they would hold their takeoff roll until I either crossed runway 29 or rolled to a stop on runway 20; again, they were no factor.

I made several radio calls: that I was about to enter the pattern, upon entering the 45, upon turning downwind, upon turning base, and upon turning final. It was just after I called the turn to base that the general aviation aircraft holding on 29 called me and we had our brief conversation.

I made my turn to base leg inside the spillway, as planned**. I opened my spoilers on the base leg, but as I turned final I felt I was getting low too fast and closed them. I felt my speed was ok*, but I do not recall actually checking it at that time.

Then things got dramatic. As I crossed the cliff at the end of runway 20 I encountered either a sudden lull in the wind or a rotor over the cliff’s edge; whichever it was, the practical effect was sudden loss of airspeed and, without sufficient airspeed margin, a loss of lift. The aircraft dropped “like a stone.” It was a sickening feeling to sense it dropping so fast and realizing I had essentially no control over what it would do. 

But I knew what was obviously what was going to happen- a hard landing was in my very near future!

We landed very hard on the main wheel, at or just barely beyond chevrons marking the displaced threshold. I rolled to a stop on the apron where the tow planes normally park. The landing was hard, but I did not feel the tail wheel hit, and I do not think it did. Nor do I think the nose wheel hit; it felt like I came down squarely on the main wheel. I do remember being a bit surprised that we did not bounce back into the air noticeably.

So how did this happen? I believe the cause of the hard landing is that I allowed my airspeed to bleed off during the base leg and the turn to final, and hence did not have sufficient margin on the airspeed to compensate for any gusts, lulls, or wind shear that I might encounter (and that, obviously, I did encounter). This was exacerbated because, despite my best intentions, I did not come in on a high, steep approach. I allowed myself to come in too slowly, and lower than I had planned.

As I said when I started: pilot error.

=======

I wrote all the words above Monday, while the incident was still fresh in my mind. Tuesday morning I carefully examined my IGC file using OLC, skylines.aero, and Doarama, and discovered, to my surprise, that:

* 1) I was flying even more slowly than I had recalled on my final approach. The GPS ground speed on my downwind leg was 70kts, on base leg 62 kts, and on the final approach 45 knots. If I assume 10 kts of wind at 240 degrees the airspeed values become more like 63 kts on downwind (essentially as I had planned) but only 52 knots through most of the final leg. I also saw that I allowed the speed to further bleed off to 38 kts (GPS ground speed) just at the threshold. If the wind were still at 10 kts that would have been 45 kts of air speed, barely above stall speed, as I crossed the threshold about 50 feet above the ground. If I hit a lull (or the wind was blocked by the trees, which is what I think actually happened) I would have been at or below stall speed! That is what I believe occurred; I stalled the aircraft while still well above the ground, and down we went. I still had forward momentum, of course, so still rolled out along the runway after the landing.

**2) moreover, although I started my turn to base "inside the spillway," I did not crab and I let the wind blow me into a rounded base leg rather than a square one, drifting downwind so the base leg was actually outside, rather than inside the spillway, making my final leg somewhat longer than I planned.

3) The analysis confirmed something I had realized just after the incident, namely that I should have flown the entire pattern higher, and that I had lost sufficient altitude on the downwind leg that I should have made my base turn considerably earlier, probably when I was even with the numbers. I had actually made two turns between NorthStar and the Initial Point (the so-called Lone Pine) specifically to burn off altitude with the goal of entering the pattern around 7400 feet, 1500 feet above ground. But I made the turns too far out from the IP and was in sink from where I made the turns all the way to the IP, so that when I reached the turn to downwind I was already down to 6800 feet, just 900 above terrain! I did observe during the downwind leg that I was lower than I wanted to be; however, for some reason, I did not correct for it appropriately with an earlier turn to base.

In short, I was too low and too slow and I did not recognize and correct for those facts.

= = =

So, what is my corrective plan for the future?

First, whenever I fly in future I will strive to be more attentive to my landing plan, making sure I am following it and also making sure that it is working; I’ll be much quicker to make an adjustment, such as making the base turn sooner.

That's in general.  A more specific corrective plan involves what I will change about flying at Truckee. I talked with Mike Mayo shortly after the incident – when I told him my airspeed plan had been 62 kts (approach plus half the wind), he observed that the "approach speed" in the POH was selected with nice, smooth-air, open field German landing strips primarily in mind, and not for the kind of roiling conditions commonly found in Truckee (and other gliderports in the Western USA) and that his approach at Truckee is to always come in at least at 70 kts, if not 80 kts, precisely because of the rotor and tree-line effect on runway 20. As he pointed out, runway 20 is a long runway, and coming in with plenty of airspeed at worst means the ground crew has to drive the golf cart a long way to get you. His comments make sense to me, so I will elevate my basic approach speed for KTRK from 55 to 65 in a G103 and then add for the wind speed from there. This would have made my target speed for this landing 72 kts. I will also follow my plan of entering the pattern at a higher altitude than I did. In conversation with Larry this afternoon, he observed that he likes to hit the Lone Pine IP at least 1500 feet AGL; in fact, that had been my plan, but I actually was 600 feet lower than that when arrived at the IP. I think, with the long runway to use, a higher, steeper, faster approach has now become my normal plan for Truckee, with modifications for specific conditions as necessary.

====

Finally, there is a very frustrating side note to all this. I was well aware of Bill Gawthrop’s crash at Truckee two years ago. Like many pilots, I have studied his trace and I have read with interest not only his description of the event but also the lengthy discussions and analyses of his accident on rec.aviation.soaring. I was very much aware of the mistakes Bill made, and I actually thought about them as I was setting up for the landing pattern.

And yet, I still came very, very close to replicating his experience.

Having a plan is only useful if you follow it while it is working, recognize when it isn't, and take decisive remedial action when necessary.

V/R,
Van Henson

You can see the trace of the flight at Skylines.aero, at:
https://skylines.aero/flights/66931/

I've also put together a Doarama visualization of the last few minutes of the flight only, which may be seen at:
http://doarama.com/view/872321

I also posted it on OLC, so another trace can be seen at:
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?flightId=1234794473

Dan Colton goes to White Castle (well, flies the Whites, anyway!)

On July 16^th, 2016 I had the distinct pleasure of sharing a 503 km cross country flight with Tim Gardner as my XC mentor.  The flight was a raffle prize generously donated by Laurie Harden of Soaring NV at the Pacific Soaring Council awards banquet last winter.   

Thank you Laurie and Tim!

The Soaring NV flight line

My soaring cross country experience started last summer and since then I have logged a little over a dozen flights in the 200-300 km range and I was thrilled when they pulled my name out of the hat for this cross country mentoring flight up at Minden in a Duo Discus.

I scheduled the flight and watched the weather with great anticipation as our date approached.  It is a 4 hour drive to the Minden airport from my house in San Carlos, CA.  But this was well worth the effort given the huge learning opportunity I was looking at.  I arrived at KMEV at 10am and met the staff at Soaring NV.  They were polite and professional and I felt right at home.  

Tim showed up shortly thereafter and we discussed the weather, TFRs (what would flying the Sierra be without at least 1 forest fire TFR), airport procedures, and chose our route of flight and outer turn-point.  Based on the forecast we opted to fly South to the Whites and get to at least Bishop before turning back and we agreed that 4pm would be the latest we should turn back in order to make it home before the lift shut down.

Inside Soaring NV

Lucas was working the line and helped up get the glider ready and out to the line.  We were number two for tow and were in the air at noon.  We took a 3,000’ tow because it was completely blue, the local lift wasn’t very good for getting out of the valley the day before and the forecast for today was about the same.  Our first climb got us 13,500’ and the optimism to run down the Pine Nuts and try for the altitude needed for the jump to the next range.  But we got stuck at the end of Pine Nuts waiting for the lift to get organized.

After thrashing around for over a half hour working week/disorganized lift we made it to just over 14,000’ near Farias Wheel Airport and headed South to the Pine Grove mountains where some clouds were starting to form.  A couple thermals later we were over 17,000’ and charging on past Baron Hilton’s Ranch and Lucky Boy Pass (I took this as a good sign).  All along the way Tim was pointing out airports, waypoints, decision points and xc strategy.  I was impressed and grateful for his wealth of knowledge and teaching style.

Southbound into the blue

Soaking up the adventure with an excellent teacher

Now we were cooking and making good time.  We worked a couple thermals along the way and were able to stay above 15,000 and with over 17,000’ had a comfortable altitude cushion for the 35 km jump to our next goal, Boundary Peak and the White Mountain range.  The flight thus far was an incredible experience and I was a sponge absorbing all the information along the way.  My prior cross country flights were in the area to the North and West of Minden between Truckee, Air Sailing and Nervino and this was this was my first time flying out of Minden and to the South.  As we approached the Whites I was awe struck.  Tim said that soaring the Whites is a great experience, but all that much better when you have to fly a hundred miles to get there.

Heading back to White Mountain

We started off ridge running all the way to White Mountain where Tim showed me how to thermal a canyon from below ridge top.  I let Tim take the controls for this lift and was impressed with his skill and a bit nervous every time we turned into the ridge as this is a skill I had not yet developed.  We were climbing like the proverbial bat out of Hell when Tim asked if I could see any hikers on the ridge-top path.  There were about a dozen and Tim decided it he wanted to give them a photo opportunity.  So it was time for full spoilers and we spiraled down a couple thousand feet back down to the ridge were he gave them a high speed pass “up close and personal”.  Here is a link to a video of the fly by: 

Here is a link to a video of the fly-by! (You'll need to log into Facebook...)

"This is Maverick, requesting permission to buzz the tower..."

Now it was back to my turn to get that altitude back and off we went South across the valley, over Bishop and beyond to just pass Coyote Flats.  We got there low, at around 11,000’, and it was a struggle getting back up.  Another glider was reporting a strong convergence over the Sierra to the South and West of our position and asked if we wanted him to wait so we could join him.  We could see the cloud streets from where we were.  However, it was going to take us too much time to climb out so we told him to keep going as we again struggled, waiting for the thermals to cycle. 

Our persistence paid off but it was now around 3:30 pm and close to our agreed upon turn-back time.  Since the clouds to the North were starting to dissipate we agreed to head back and had to make our next decision.  Do we cross the valley back over to the Whites where the lift was still strong and marked by a cloud street all the way back to Boundary peak or head off on the more direct path toward Mono Lake. 

Cu markers ahead

Although we saw only two cloud markers we decided to go direct to Mono Lake.  It was 35 km to our next good climb and then we crossed a big blue patch with no lift for about another 55 km.  This lift was a bit disorganized but we again persisted and got the altitude we needed for the next jump to Mono Lake.

Looking at the Sierra from the east

 We chose well and reached just South/East of Mono Lake at 14,000’, found a climb to 17,000’, and were off on our next jump North.

Running the gauntlet direct to Mono Lake, Sierra to the left and Whites to the right

Time to go, Sierra on your hip, go fast!

Our next struggle was above the old ghost town of Bodi in weak/disorganized lift with only 1 knot on the averager.  Our second thermal in that area was much better and at about 15,000’ we encountered wave and were blessed with smooth 6-8 knots lift to 17,999 and had final glide in the bag.  Our glide back was a straight shot of 95 km at 120-130 knots ground speed and was very satisfying after such a challenging day. 

By the numbers we did 503 km, soared for 5.5 hours at an average ground speed of 90 km/hr, and used 41 thermals to get around the task.  It was an amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to kick-start their cross country soaring training.

Here is the trace of the flight, which can be found in more detail at https://skylines.aero/flights/66975/ 

And lastly, I cannot end this tale of good fortune without again praising the staff, tow pilots, instructors and line kids and fleet of SoaringNV.  This type of one-on-one training cannot be passed up.  

So give a big Hello to Laurie and the rest of the crew from me next time you are out at SoaringNV and take them up on their offer, whatever it may be.  You will be glad you did.

Sincerely,

Dan Colton